Anniversary

Well yesterday me and Alex celebrated 7 years together. Hard to believe some days. Other days I totally buy it! We didnt really do anything big, we never really do. Alex made me a beautiful herb box about a month ago so I could start using it. And he got another membership to Ducks Unlimited. I did spend the previous couple of days making Ragu al Forno. You see it was my grandmothers birthday and we were all going up there to be with her. So my Ragu was more for them, but since I had some leftover why not make some for us? I mean its Ragu al Forno!! Anyways, I digress.

So you know how most people talk bad about their family? They always have some branch of their family tree they are ashamed of or embarassed by. Well mine's not like that. I think they must be the most caring and loving people around. And what happened next was a complete shock. So we are all finished eating lunch, the kids are all playing and everyone is giving my Granny her presents. And then after shes done they pull me and Alex and sit us at the head of the table together. Right then it hit me they are doing something sneaky. They said they knew it was our anniversary and they wanted to do something for us. So everyone had a bag of some kind of food and they were giving us the Top Chef challenge! They wanted to see me make dishes with the ingredients I was giving. And giving they were. We got a half a table full of goodies.

In the box you see Hoovers corn meal (best in the world!!), dry milk, protein bars, 2 beautiful pumpkins, tropical trail mix, Jim Dandy grits, and pickled hot sausage. To the left of the box is a can of guinea onions and a huge bag full of peppers......wonderful looking peppers. In front of the box you see pickled green jalepenos, part peanuts, chili dipping oil, raspberry vinaigrette, tuscan vinaigrette, Parmesan Garlic vinaigrette, basil pesto, sundried tomato pesto, red pepper spread, honey roasted peanuts, tilapia, and another large bag of peppers. Then to the right of the box you see a basket of hickory nuts, a bag of pears, flat leaf parsely plant, rosemary plant, and 2 bottles of listerine. Whew.......thats a lot of stuff! And thats not including the bag of turnips and roots and the dried chili strands that were also given to us.

I was overwhelmed and truly grateful for my wonderful family. So thank you everyone.....I promise I will make some really good and tasty dishes with the ingredients that were given to us. And you can believe that I will be blogging all of them! I already have some really good ideas for some of the ingredients and I will start working out some more recipes with them. But Alex has already dipped into the pickled hot sausage.....dont know how he eats it! But thats okay....after all they were given to both of us. So enjoy those sausage babe!! And thanks to my wonderful family!!